Transitioning to endemicity

THIS is indeed welcome news. The government has announced that Malaysia is now entering “the transition to endemic” phase of Covid-19 on April 1.

In short, we are on the road to normalcy, but with a caveat. While it is a temporary stage before we move on to the endemic phase, it is indeed the best news we have heard since we were hit by the virus.

It has been a long, arduous, tiring and nervous journey. We have never experienced an epidemic of such a scale before. It hit us real bad. Not just us, but around the world too.

Imagine, humanity brought down to its knees. The fearless, arrogant, greedy Homo sapiens of the 21st century could never have imagined the impact of a virus originating from Wuhan, China at the end of 2019, on them.

We had our share of scares in the form of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus) and the Nipah virus, but the number of those infected were small, so too the number of deaths.

Covid-19 has infected 3.8 million Malaysians so far and caused more than 33,000 deaths. Globally, it has infected 457 million people and caused six million deaths.

The economic impact is staggering. In its wake, the pandemic has desecrated economies and industries. It caused hardship to billions around the globe.

Yet Covid-19 is not the deadliest pandemic to date. There were many more deadly viruses in the history of mankind. In the early 20th century, the so-labelled “Spanish Flu” hit Europe and North America. It killed 50 million people.

But then, not everyone was able to travel. The pandemic was largely confined to Europe and North America. The Spanish Flu though is nothing compared to the Black Death of the 14th Century. The bubonic plague pandemic killed at least 150 million people at the time, when the population of the world was less than a billion. The pandemic lasted seven years. The Spanish Flu, on the other hand, lasted two years.

It has been 27 months since Covid-19 hit us. Are we really at the tail end of the pandemic? We have learned how the virus replicated and mutated into the Alpha variant (identified first in the United Kingdom) and Delta (originated in India). Both variants are deadly. Is the Omicron, while extremely contagious, a milder and less fatal variant compared to earlier ones?

The Black Death peaked from 1347 to 1351, while the Spanish Flu lasted a full two years. In layman’s terms, is Covid-19 now mutating into just another flu?

Are we really out of the woods? Shall we live a normal life like we did pre-December 2019? Is “back to normalcy” a reality soon? We are hopeful, yet cautiously optimistic. Experience tells us that we don’t know when a new variant might emerge.

According to health experts, an infection becomes endemic when the rate of infections remain static in any given location. It implies that the pathogen, the SARS-CoV-2 that is causing the disease, is still there in circulation but not causing widespread infection as seen in the last two years. It also means that the virus will still be circulating among the population and there will be occurrences depending on the situation and a susceptible population.

Our line of defence, of course, is the percentage of the population that are already vaccinated. The key is to have the majority of the population having immunity against the infection.

But bear in mind, a disease becoming endemic does not mean we are totally safe. Oxford University professor on viral evolution Dr Aris Katzourakis, writing for Nature, warned that a disease becoming endemic does not mean it is harmless. According to him, a disease can be endemic yet can still be widespread and deadly. He cited the case of malaria that killed more than 600,000 people and tuberculosis that infected at least 10 million people and killed 1.5 million of them in 2020. There is no guarantee of stability, he argues, and disruptive waves might still occur.

We have our concerns too. While the government announced the beginning of the transition period into the endemic phase, record numbers of Malaysians are infected. New records are registered in terms of daily infections.

We are hopeful things will take a turn for the better. We have suffered in the last two years. We need to move on with our lives and resuscitate the economy. That is why the road to endemicity matters so much.

Johan Jaaffar is a journalist, editor and for some years, chairman of a media company. He is passionate about all things literature and the arts, and is a diehard rugby fan. The views expressed here are entirely his own.